The present invention relates to systems and methods for declaring variables.
While diligently declaring variables when coding a software program may be good programming practice, it can be a burdensome, slow and disjointed process for programmers. As a result, programmers may avoid declaring variables if they feel that they can keep track of all of them in a shorter piece of code. However, without properly declaring variables, programmers may experience problems with malfunctioning code due to misuse of variables or by assigning incorrect data type values to a variable.
There have been some previous attempts at automating variable declarations to decrease the burden for programmers. For example, an integrated development environment (IDE) shell may be configured to recognize variables in data processor readable code based on their context or location. In this illustrative example, an IDE coding module may look at function calls made within a data processor readable program to identify variables being passed, and declare the variables found in the function calls. However, in declaring the variables, the IDE coding module will have to guess at the type of variable being passed in the function call based on the assigned data. It is possible that the guess may be wrong, and thus, the variable may be declared incorrectly. This can cause the code to execute with seemingly random results or to crash completely.
What is needed is an improved system and method for declaring variables.